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Post by soccermom01 on Mar 10, 2020 7:09:21 GMT -5
Hi! I realize that most everyone here has older kids playing in much more advanced leagues, but I am very new to the club soccer/academy world and have been quite overwhelmed with the experience so far. My 9yo daughter is playing on a 2011 (u9 obviously) academy team this year. She played rec until maybe 1 1/2 - 2 years ago when she was asked to try out for the pre-academy team. The pre-academy experience was mostly an unorganized mess, but I held out hope at the time that when she moved up to an academy team, things would be more organized and involve more actual playing time. Unfortunately, that has not held true so far. So before I get in someone's face about my concerns, I wanted to approach some folks with experience to find out if this is a local club/our particular team issue or common among all clubs. Our little team has had several unpleasant issues since the fall, and this season's schedule may be the last straw for me.
1) Fall season, we never did get a complete schedule. We would find out Wednesday or Thursday when and where we would play for the weekend. Spring season has started out somewhat better, with an actual schedule for the month of March, then it falls apart for April and May. No dates/times/locations, only a general idea of the opposing team. For a u9 academy, is this the way it usually works or should we expect to get an actual schedule of games for the season?
2) Even with pre-academy, the girls would normally play 2 games on a Saturday or Sunday or maybe 1 game Saturday and 1 game Sunday in a weekend. We are driving all over the metro area to play one game per weekend. The parents were all under the impression from something that was said by one of the coaches in the fall, that we should be expecting more than one game per weekend. Any comments on that? Should a u9 academy team have more than one game per weekend, or is that fairly standard?
Thank you for any feedback!
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Post by uga326 on Mar 10, 2020 7:27:58 GMT -5
We are just starting out as well. My son is a 2012 U8 Pre-Academy player at a Big 5 club. I can't compare our experience to any other club as my son has played here since he started at 4, but we've been pleased with how things have gone. We train two days a week, and at a minimum one match each weekend. Most often, we play one match on Saturday and one match on Sunday. If it is a tournament weekend, we've played two matches on Saturday, one on Sunday and if you advance to championship a 2nd Sunday match for total of 4 over the two days. Our coach handles Team 1 and Team 2 of the 4 teams we have at U8. There are instances where our coach has a conflict between schedules, but another coach takes over in those situations. Our team manager has loaded all practices and matches into TeamSnap so we know where we are playing, what time to arrive, what jersey to wear, etc. As far as playing time, my son is one of 3 bench players on a team of 10 boys. The coaches do a good job of making sure the kids play around 25 mins. of a 50 min. match. Some play a bit more, some play a bit less but all are given an opportunity.
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Post by soccermom01 on Mar 10, 2020 7:39:11 GMT -5
We are just starting out as well. My son is a 2012 U8 Pre-Academy player at a Big 5 club. I can't compare our experience to any other club as my son has played here since he started at 4, but we've been pleased with how things have gone. We train two days a week, and at a minimum one match each weekend. Most often, we play one match on Saturday and one match on Sunday. If it is a tournament weekend, we've played two matches on Saturday, one on Sunday and if you advance to championship a 2nd Sunday match for total of 4 over the two days. Our coach handles Team 1 and Team 2 of the 4 teams we have at U8. There are instances where our coach has a conflict between schedules, but another coach takes over in those situations. Our team manager has loaded all practices and matches into TeamSnap so we know where we are playing, what time to arrive, what jersey to wear, etc. As far as playing time, my son is one of 3 bench players on a team of 10 boys. The coaches do a good job of making sure the kids play around 25 mins. of a 50 min. match. Some play a bit more, some play a bit less but all are given an opportunity. I should clarify that our team manager passes along game info as soon as she gets it from the scheduling person. TeamSnap would be awesome, however, we don't have any dates to add to any kind of calendar  |
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Post by uga326 on Mar 10, 2020 7:42:59 GMT -5
We are just starting out as well. My son is a 2012 U8 Pre-Academy player at a Big 5 club. I can't compare our experience to any other club as my son has played here since he started at 4, but we've been pleased with how things have gone. We train two days a week, and at a minimum one match each weekend. Most often, we play one match on Saturday and one match on Sunday. If it is a tournament weekend, we've played two matches on Saturday, one on Sunday and if you advance to championship a 2nd Sunday match for total of 4 over the two days. Our coach handles Team 1 and Team 2 of the 4 teams we have at U8. There are instances where our coach has a conflict between schedules, but another coach takes over in those situations. Our team manager has loaded all practices and matches into TeamSnap so we know where we are playing, what time to arrive, what jersey to wear, etc. As far as playing time, my son is one of 3 bench players on a team of 10 boys. The coaches do a good job of making sure the kids play around 25 mins. of a 50 min. match. Some play a bit more, some play a bit less but all are given an opportunity. I should clarify that our team manager passes along game info as soon as she gets it from the scheduling person. TeamSnap would be awesome, however, we don't have any dates to add to any kind of calendar I'll let other chime in, but that does not seem like it is common. We knew we were playing in a tournament in February, and we received our entire spring schedule towards the end of the month. Our first friendly match was this past weekend. |
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Post by TheMadOx on Mar 10, 2020 7:54:10 GMT -5
I have been in academy ranks for 10+ years. Academy can be messy if the academy scheduler is not organized and if your club is outside of the "alliance" circle. The alliance circle organizes quickly and will have dates and location (home or away) of all matches for the season...times for the most part, but these are subject to change. We generally get 2-3 matches and players will at times play in multiple matches a day.
If you are at a small club, it's tough to get matches with the big clubs because they are busy playing each other, which makes sense because the can field enough teams to cover the age groups...makes scheduling simpler.
Tournaments are always known about a month in advance...however we are week to week with rosters...our players generally know by Wednesday what time slots they will play in.
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Post by mistergrinch on Mar 10, 2020 8:31:29 GMT -5
Even when we started at a smaller club - it was never that bad. We had schedules (at least preliminary) well ahead of time. Sounds like your club may be a mess.
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Post by slickdaddy96 on Mar 10, 2020 9:24:24 GMT -5
I don't know what club you are in currently, but for SSA as a team manager back in the academy days scheduling is not always set in stone till Tuesday or Wednesday of the week you play. Sure there might be a tentative schedule out for matchdays and where they might be played, but as far as times go, you may not always know the exact game times. Also if you are in a pooled format, you won't know rosters for games until Tuesday or Wednesdays most weeks, so even if you know all the game times, you won't know what game your kid plays until the rosters are out.
Sometimes game dates and times have to be changed so things are very fluid in academy and even select soccer sometimes. It sounds as if your club, coach, or assignor might be a little worse than normal, but some chaos is to be expected at the Academy level. It is a lot more predictable once you get in to select but still even then sometimes things change last minute.
As far as tournaments go, I knew as team manager probably knew at least 1-2 months out depending on the time frame of when coaches knew. I always immediately put all games and tournament dates on our shutterfly share site as soon as I knew them as well.
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Post by soccermom01 on Mar 10, 2020 10:08:55 GMT -5
I don't know what club you are in currently, but for SSA as a team manager back in the academy days scheduling is not always set in stone till Tuesday or Wednesday of the week you play. Sure there might be a tentative schedule out for matchdays and where they might be played, but as far as times go, you may not always know the exact game times. Also if you are in a pooled format, you won't know rosters for games until Tuesday or Wednesdays most weeks, so even if you know all the game times, you won't know what game your kid plays until the rosters are out. Sometimes game dates and times have to be changed so things are very fluid in academy and even select soccer sometimes. It sounds as if your club, coach, or assignor might be a little worse than normal, but some chaos is to be expected at the Academy level. It is a lot more predictable once you get in to select but still even then sometimes things change last minute. As far as tournaments go, I knew as team manager probably knew at least 1-2 months out depending on the time frame of when coaches knew. I always immediately put all games and tournament dates on our shutterfly share site as soon as I knew them as well. Thanks for the info! This is exactly what I wanted to know! We don't play from a pool b/c we have a small team, but it does help knowing that schedules are fluid for the most part at this level. Tournaments are a completely different. We are well informed about the details of those. Our team manager and coach are great communicators! We have problems when it gets above them, which I've noticed seems to be the standard. |
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Post by Soccerhouse on Mar 10, 2020 10:22:10 GMT -5
My general rule of thumb especially in the spring season for academy teams was always to over schedule games due to all the rainouts.
I assume like our club most do not make up academy games.
One year, we went almost 6 weeks I think without playing a single game -- worst part was there were some sundays that were breathtaking outside, but our club didn't' over schedule, so no games etc.......
I suggested over scheduling to our academy director, and then basically got yelled out for bringing it up. Not lieing and was told they were doing everything they possibly could. I said I agree, but in the future, just schedule more games knowing many will be canceled...... They never listened to me................................................
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Post by oraclesfriend on Mar 10, 2020 10:59:08 GMT -5
I have been TM for U9/U10 for both my older kid (at a smallish club) and my younger at a Big 5/6 club. In both cases we had a schedule for the majority of the season about 1-4 weeks prior to the season start. (Earlier notice with the big club). Once we had a spring or fall schedule it was USUALLY the entire season. Sometimes this was not the case, but usually it was. There can be last minute time changes. Even now there are some clubs that switch the opponent on us at the last minute. We are pool play with 2 teams and sometimes the other clubs will decide they want to switch which team their teams are playing. We generally have a game Saturday and a game Sunday, but not always and the top team seems to get fewer games than the second team (this is due to appropriate competition level).
I would say that your situation sounds more chaotic than average. Smaller clubs do have a harder time getting games scheduled, but when we were at a small club we still had two games per weekend and knew the schedule with plenty of time to plan.
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Post by slickdaddy96 on Mar 10, 2020 12:55:54 GMT -5
I would add that SSA states the goal is to get 11-12 games per player in academy per season. SSA schedules more than that with the assumption that some will be cancelled. Some seasons we ended up playing 15-20 games due to no rain and one season we had as few as 8 games due to the rain and cancellations, but I would say if you averaged it all out we probably hit that 11-12 mark if not more per kid.
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Post by blu on Mar 10, 2020 13:14:45 GMT -5
I remember the academy days, often times we would not find out our game time until the Wednesday before. It was a pain.
It was done because they would often times mix the teams to match the club they were playing. When you have 5-6 teams per age group they are trying to make the weekend games fair. It wasn't unusual to have an A team, A/B team, B team, B/C team, C team, etc.
Seems like 2 games per weekend was pretty standard back then.
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Post by Keeper on Mar 10, 2020 14:30:21 GMT -5
Sadly like one person said for a small club outside the bigger alliances getting a week to week schedule is normal. Especially with U9 girls as that age group has almost disappeared in small clubs.
About the amount of games per season there’s two camps now. There’s the camp that says kids should play 2-3 per weekend and closer to 20 is better. And then there’s the group that says 1 per weekend with the occasional Sat/Sun is preferred with 10-12 total. It’s like politics, both completely split and unwilling to compromise. This battle is going forward at all ages too.
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